Last month, I finished up my college summer exams for the 4th time. This time however was different because they were my last set of college exams. I eagerly await my results which come out on the 14th of this month…
Hanging up my pen
It still hasn’t hit home that i’m finished with college. It probably won’t until September / October when i see everyone else back at college. It’s mainly a relief to get it over and done with. It had drained me for too long. I was spending my time studying too many subjects which i had no genuine interest in, just to pick up the marks. My own creativity suffered as a result.
I’m confident i’ll get a 2.1 honours degree confirmed this month and that will finally mark the end of college and close the chapter on the past 4 years of my life. A long time, but time invested as opposed to wasted. I can’t possibly look back and regret going to college or getting a degree. I’m ‘crystal balling’ here but it *should* help stabilise my future. It’s a gold star on a CV and you need as many as possible to fend off the competition.
Anyway, i presented my dissertation last month and went in to great detail on how i think i’d do in my final exams (yes, before i sat them). Some people have asked me whether i’ll miss college and i will miss the people. I won’t miss the course or the 100km+ daily drive, nor will i miss gaps in timetables and all the assignments, moodle, webmail and having to constantly log in to access wifi.
Glendalough
I took a random trip to Dublin / Wicklow when i really should have been at home studying for exams. I drove up through the wicklow mountains and down to Glendalough where i walked around and took a few photos. Caught some bad driving too on my road trip…
Changes to office set up
I decided to blow up my PC (virtually) and reinstall windows 7. Always a smart move. No amount of ‘delete’ seems to speed it up but a fresh install always works wonders. The main problem with that is the hassle involved. You need time and patience plus plenty of backups.
Another small change i made to my set up was to hook up my Mac mini to my surround sound system. It was previously exclusively used by my PC but the PC and Mac have now formed a tag team and can both use the speakers simultaneously, if they wish.
Holidays
I spent a week away in Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina in May 2011. Not your regular tourist destination but that’s probably why i liked it so much, it was different. I’ll probably continue to drip feed you more photos and information from that trip in the weeks to come…
What’s in store for June
Work. Decisions. Figuring out what i want to be when i grow up. I’ve been keeping an eye on job sites for the past few weeks now and there are jobs out there that would suit me but not many within driving range. Right now, the sensible option in my mind is to work regardless of how, what, where, how much. The quickest way to do that is for me to set up freelancing properly… that’s the straightforward, quickest and easiest route to work in my opinion.
Of course i’m talking purely about working for money, not working on side projects that arguably create more value in the long term. I’ll continue to work on my own projects like theleavingcert.com, for which June is our busiest month of the year. There’s also one or two more projects i’m involved in that could materialise in to something at any stage, but right now i have to play those cards close to my chest.
I’ll be making changes to this blog too. From now on, all posts will be published after midnight, rather than before midnight. I feel this allows me to invest more time and thought in to posts and schedule them as opposed to rush them to hit deadlines. I’ve stuck to this new schedule for the past few days now and i like it. I’m also keen to start blogging daily again now that i’m free from college.